MANILA - An old man's scalp was removed from his head after being run over by vehicles speeding on an unlit portion of the east service road of the South Luzon Expressway in Parañaque City, police said Friday.

Police Officer 2 Abdulmuin Tula of the Parañaque City police office said that when he and his team responded to the scene, they thought the body belonged to a salvage victim.

"Akala namin salvage victim. Siguro chinop-chop tapos hinalo sa ibang karne para hindi mahalata, iyon pala aksidente (We thought he was a salvage victim. We thought his body was chopped into pieces and then mixed with [animal] meat, but then we found out that [he was a victim of a vehicular] accident)," Tula told ABS-CBN News in an interview.

He said it took them a while before discovering that the victim was an old man, based on the body parts they recovered on the road and a removed scalp with white hairs.

"He was a hit and run victim," the police investigator said, adding that he is hoping someone would be able to give them a detailed description of the vehicle that bumped the old man on the east service road.

Some witnesses said the old man was run over by a truck. The police investigator, meanwhile, said other vehicles could have accidentally run over the old man which led to his body's mutilation.

Ferdinand Angeles, a Skyway traffic enforcer, said some residents told him that the old man had been seen by some residents walking in the middle of the east service road before dawn Friday, mindless of the speeding vehicles.

A barangay security staff chief of Barangay Sucat told ABS-CBN News that it would be impossible for drivers to dodge a person crossing on the unlit service road. He said snatching and several incidents of holdup had been recorded in the area because of the absence of a lamp post. With a report from Niko Baua, ABS-CBN News